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Physical appearance and social status are simultaneously hollow and essential.

“The Nose” explores the farce and sham of appearance and status, and how these things are often meaningless illusions. When Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov finds his missing nose at a church and attempts to convince the nose that it belongs to him, he ends up allowing the nose to dominate the conversation and insult him. There is no logical reason for Kovalyov to submit to his own nose, but he does so because the nose is dressed in a beautiful uniform that correlates with the state councilor rank. The nose’s appearance alone controls Kovalyov’s behavior toward it, which should seem ridiculous and absurd, but is in fact an accurate reflection of how appearance dictates treatment in a hierarchical society. While appearance has little to do with inner value, it is a strong illusion that can have influence over how people treat each other.

Additionally, Gogol satirizes the hollowness of social status. These ranks were made up by Peter the Great so that lower- and middle-class people could earn their nobility and live in service to the crown. The positions themselves are ambiguous and very bureaucratic, throwing into question whether these jobs are actually necessary. Gogol explores the absurdity of how a person can be bestowed with a ranking that will automatically cause them to be perceived as better, more respectable, and more intelligent than another person who has not been bestowed that ranking. There may be no difference between two people other than a title, which is an ultimately meaningless social construct, and yet the person with the title will consider themselves superior to the person without.

However, while we may be able to acknowledge that physical appearance and social status have little to do with our abilities and value, and that good appearance and status are often just bestowed on us by the luck of genetics or family lineage, that acknowledgement often doesn’t have a practical effect on how we are treated and perceived. The belief that physical appearance and social status are traits that reflect a person’s intelligence, morality, and value is an ingrained social construct that is difficult to deconstruct. While we can devalue our own physical appearance and class, focusing instead on our inner character, others will not necessarily do the same. Their perception of us, and the actions they make based on these perceptions, will greatly affect our lives. Kovalyov understands that perhaps the most important secret to obtaining and keeping power is to look and act the part. People respond to this illusion in the way he desires: his barber does not directly challenge him when he’s rude, Mrs. Podtochina wishes for him to marry her daughter, and high-ranking officials invite him into their social circles. It is only when he loses his nose, marking him as an oddity and as someone who has no place in Russia’s strict hierarchy, that Kovalyov is afforded less respect, from the police inspector to the newspaper clerk. Additionally, Ivan Yakovlevich, whose physical appearance demonstrates that he is working class, is treated quite differently from Kovalyov. The police watch Ivan closely, marking him as a suspicious person although he has exhibited no prior signs of criminality, and even thoroughly investigate the small thing he has dropped into the river, which likely would not have been perceived as significant had Ivan been dressed and groomed in a more presentable manner.

Social interactions are pretexts to display status and power.

Gogol’s “The Nose” foists the reader into an overwhelming world of subtle social dynamics and power struggles in which every conversation and interaction consists of people attempting to assert their power over others. Kovalyov’s first interaction with another person in the story is given to us by the narrator, who describes how Kovalyov insults the smell of his barber’s hands each time he goes in for a shave. The barber, unsure why his hands would stink, doesn’t understand why Kovalyov makes these comments. However, once we learn of Kovalyov’s obsession with rank and status, we realize that whether Ivan’s hands actually stink is unimportant to Kovalyov—he makes these offensive statements to highlight the difference in status between Ivan and himself. Additionally, Kovalyov is in the midst of a power struggle with Mrs. Podtochina—she wants Kovalyov to propose to her daughter, while Kovalyov wants to have his fun courting the daughter while ultimately remaining a single man. While Mrs. Podtochina is a field officer’s wife, meaning that their family holds a good deal of social power, Kovalyov ultimately has control over whether to issue a proposal. The two engage in a battle of niceties, maintaining decorum even as they attack each other’s characters. At the end of the story, after Kovalyov regains his nose, he takes great pleasure in meeting Mrs. Podtochina and her daughter on the street and exchanging happy greetings, all while secretly reveling in his knowledge that with the reinstatement of his nose comes the reinstatement of his power.

Gogol also explores the power differentials between individuals and systems in “The Nose.” Social interactions are not always displays of individual status—they can also be displays of institutional status. For example, although the clerk at the newspaper office is, as an individual, lower ranking than Kovalyov, his position as a member of the media, a powerful societal force, permits him to hold dominance in his interaction with Kovalyov. As a representative of a greater institution, he has the power to refuse to publish Kovalyov’s ad in the paper. This holds true with the police inspector as well. As a representative of the law-and-order system, he holds the power in interactions with individuals who seek police services, and takes the opportunity to use that power to insult Kovalyov.

It is through these competitive and vicious social interactions that Gogol paints a bleak picture of a community in which there are few genuine or uncorrupted relationships. Due to the piece’s satirical nature, these interactions are often peppered with humor and silliness, but they are ultimately a sharp indictment of Russia’s social sphere and speak to the egoism and alienation that are born from individualistic hierarchical societies.

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